L.T. File: 011: Vö- The Plague/The Plagued
The plague began not during the enslavement, but during the exodus. Those who dwell below had put a disease... a virus in our people that was set to activate upon contact with the world outside the eldritch core where we were kept. We didn't know. We could not have known the horror that awaited us upon escape. We thought that we were free from the enemy, and running, but that was not the end. In some ways, it was only the beginning.
-Elder Granite (pre-~700)
The Aulvi, upon their escape from the eldritch core, the prison within The Below, that they had rebelled against and escaped from bagan getting very sick. First, the infirm, and many of those who had let age take them in their depression, then the young who had not yet developed immunizations to the illnesses. Then seemingly random members of the Aulvi. The King was among these later groups. During this first stage of the exodus, there was so much chaos, that the aulvi did not see it for what it was... a plague. The plague.
Aulvi began to die quickly, their bodies carried by the living, their souls following their bodies. Until the bodies stirred. The corpses began to attack their families, transferring the plague, the king bit two of his daughters, siblings of the One-eyed prince before the queen removed his head. The dead rose, and not with the ceremony of lef that allowed for the dead to join the honored dead or the lefil vwùe̊ṭṣil or mummies in the common tongue. Worse, the disease seemed to affect the lefil vwùe̊ṭṣil, turning them into the plagued dead. This disease, it turns out, can overwhelm anything but incorporeal undead (though, luckily, those few vampires among the aulvi managed to avoid infection, so it is impossible to tell if the virulence passes to them, or if they have a resistance, as these are the two most virulent disease/viruses we have come across.)
Gwâ̧âr, the Ashwalker fell during the first engagement with the plagued, giving the Aulven people a chance to run. as he schorched thousands of his formerly living friends to ashen bones. Eventually he fell, and would become one of the greatest foes of the Aulvi. Plagued himself, he woud lead the plagued in the final advance that took the life of The One-eyed prince. Over the thousand years of the exodus, the plagued hunted the living, hundreds of millions of Aulvi dead. those few millions who escaped to the surface a small number of the larger portion who originally rebelled. Worse... the oldest were gone, and any children at the time of the beginning of the exodus were among their ranks. While the other monsters of Those Who Dwell Below killed many, and caused much anguish, no problem was as great a cost to the Aulven people as The Plague.
Today, the Aulvi keep careful eye for signs of The Plague reaching the surface, for if it does, it will be terrible indeed. There are similar diseases in Faernyr, but none quite so virulent, save, perhaps the supernatural strain of vampirism that stalks its shores. Zombies are most similar in mannerism there, but their virulence is low by comparison to the Plague. Foremost among concerns of the Aulvi is preventing the spread of this Plague.
(This is a Sphere 6: Plèṭṣïb̧ level threat, and the chief among such threats among documented threats by the Tranquil Shadows.)
Transmission & Vectors
Saliva, or blood to blood contact
Causes
Those Who Dwell Below crafted this virus to punish Aulvi slaves who attempted escape.
Symptoms
Death, leading to reanimation, and extreme infection, hunting for living (primarily humanoids) flesh to spread the virus
Treatment
Destruction of the reanimated form. No other cure known
Prognosis
Very, very bad
Affected Groups
All humanoids, primarily Aulvi, includes recently deceased if bitten while blood remains, and brain is not destroyed.
Hosts & Carriers
The plagued consist, at this time, exclusively of Aulvi.
Prevention
do not get bitten, do not allow infected blood to enter your wounds. Maintain bodily covering at all times, try to avoid the Plagued rather than interacting whenever possible.
History
I. “Remember Ash” — Memoirs of Silverleaf, Survivor of the First Outbreak
Archive Reference: Case File 001–A (“The Plague of the Dead”)
Classification: Sphere 6: Plèṭṣïb̧-level threat
Recovered by: The Tranquil Shadows, Archive of Bleached Bones, Hall 3
I write this so that the young may understand what price was paid for the light they walk in.
I was there when the first of the bodies stirred.We did not yet know that the sickness was a seed planted in our blood by those who dwelled below.The first to rise were the children. Small bodies, quiet as sleep.
They opened their eyes and watched us with the same gaze as before, but there was no spark there. No reflection. When they breathed, the air did not move. Then they began to sing.
It was not a scream, nor a chant of rage, but something hollow and toneless — music built of heartless tone rather than soul. A lullaby that mothers once hummed in the sleep-pits. A harvest song stripped of its rhythm, each note dragging itself through the dark like a broken limb. No warmth, no grief, no life. Only the shape without the soul birthed. They turned on us, the reanimated children tore into the healers and the caretakers of the dead. So many killed because those at the beginning did not think to destroy the living dead. Gwâ̧âr burned many of them, and the rest of the Jester's blade at the time dealt with many of the things. That sound still visits me in dreams. It is the sound of everything we lost.
Unfortunately, it was already too late, thousands had been destroyed, but millions from other pods remained, and entire sections of the living had been extinguished. Millions of the reanimated dead came through the choke points. Gwâ̧âr stood in the center of the cavern of flame — I saw his eyes when the first tide came. He told the rest to leave. He was the most powerful, perhaps other than the One-eyed-Prince, Bhakhu, as he was simply known then. We all ran, Gwâ̧âr stayed. We knew he was already gone before the plague touched him. He called the fire and we obeyed. He brought the ash.We thought the blaze would purify, but he must have had his limits. When he returned it was not as our salvation, but our doombringer. Though he remains a hero in our eyes, because with his original sacrifice, it's possible that none of us would have made it.
I lived because I ran. I still can’t forget the songs, or the overwhelming heat. Music without a pulse, sung by mouths that remembered sound but not sorrow. I think that was worse than the killing.
—Vaethen Lirhae: Silverleaf, survivor of the First Burning
II. “Letters of Sælvon, King of the Aulvi” — Journal Fragments
Recovered from: Resin-sealed chest, marked For My Daughters
Condition: Incomplete. Final page partially dissolved by blood and bile.
Addendum filed by: Operative Molten, Tranquil Shadows (now Director Sashine- Onyx Wind )
Day 3 of the Fever
My beloved —
It began as warmth behind my eyes, a tremor in my hands. I dreamt of the light we have never seen. When I awoke, my nails were dark beneath the skin, as though ink had pooled there. The healers say it is fatigue, but I feel something whispering beneath the pulse. When I close my eyes, I see the tunnels breathing.
Tell the children their father will not falter. I will not.
Not yet.
Day 6
My tongue tastes of rust. I'm so tired, my guards carry me as we run... as they run. I hear them in my dreams — the dead. They sing the old song of the Fields of First Harvest. They should not remember that. They should not remember anything. The sound crawls into the bones. When I breathe, I think I am humming with them.
Day 8
The fever climbs. I saw my reflection in the water.
If I am gone, let her not come near me.
Let none of them come near.
Day— (mostly unreadable)
words...
slipping from...
they know me...
they wait...
outside my eyes...
Archivist Addendum:
Recovered from beneath the Queen’s blade, still damp with resin and blood. Records indicate that the King turned during the night, infecting two of his daughters before the Queen performed the severing. Both daughters were lost, have not been recovered. The Queen’s warmth has never been the same since.
End of entry.
III. “They Still Sang in the Dark” — Oral Histories of an Exodus Survivor
Compiled by: Archivist Dlethraun Vey-Deepcavern, Tranquil Shadows Oral Wing
Date: Pre-Surface Era, 412 years after the beginning of the Exodus
Classification: Containment File – Plague Monitoring Initiative
Testimony Fragment — Speaker: Unknown, voice identified as female, early adulthood at the time of recording
We walked for days through the wet tunnels. The walls sweated black water, and every sound became a mirror of our fear. Then, one night, we heard them.
Not footsteps — not screams.
Singing.
It was soft, almost gentle, like something from a home I could not remember. When we drew closer, we saw their shapes. Mothers and children. Brothers walking arm in arm. Their mouths moved, but the air was still. Their voices were wrong — too even, too cold, too exact. No tremor, no breath. Just notes placed where life used to be.
They sang lullabies that we recognized, we recognized the words, but it was in the seventh language, not one of the Aulven six — they were the songs of our dead, sung in the tones of Those Who Dwell Below. We hid in the water, half-drowned. When they passed, the smallest one turned its head toward me. Her eyes glowed like pearls under the torchlight. She did not blink. She did not see me. But she opened her mouth, and in my daughter’s voice said: Sleep now. Sleep.
We ran. And behind us, the song went on. I can still hear it when I am alone — not in my ears, but in my soul.
Director’s Closing Note:
The survivors who gave these accounts all described the same phenomenon:
The singing of the dead — soulless echoes wearing the melody of memory.
The plague was not just hunger. It was imitation.
-Director Sashine
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